


Creatures On The Carousel

by greenapple



Category: Moonlighting (TV)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Anonymous Sex, Character Study, Friendship, Gen, Period Typical Attitudes, Random Pairing Generator, Stealth Crossover, Unresolved Sexual Tension, jack harkness cameo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-08-07
Updated: 2008-08-07
Packaged: 2018-04-26 06:24:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,789
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4993675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greenapple/pseuds/greenapple
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Maddie walks in on David and a passing ship.  David has a few more drinks.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Creatures On The Carousel

**Author's Note:**

> What started out as an exercise with a prompt generating meme ended up being an introspective character study. There are some good bits in with the bad.

So she’s still standing there with her eyes bugging out when the guy buttons up, hitches his suspenders and grabs that ridiculous coat, brushes by her with a toothy grin and a teasing “Ma’am,” and walks out the door. Walks out, might he add, in a really spectacularly fitted pair of pants.

David stands – tries to stand, still a bit wobbly in the knees – and touches his forehead with two fingers.

“I salute that,” he says, at the same time as she says, “David!”

“Gotta give respect to the troops, Maddie, they do a bang-up job, God bless America.” And he keeps waiting for a “David” or an “Addison” or even a, “David Addison, how could you!” but her tongue is still trying to work its way around the first one. Shock, he guesses, though he can’t imagine why she’d be shocked; it’s the nineteen eighties for crying out loud, not the eighteen eighties, and if he only sometimes supplied the pronouns and let her assume the rest, she can hardly blame him for not being able to read between the lines.

He dryly laughs; his fingers are numb on his zipper; spent and for a few more seconds at least, happy – or what he lets pass for happy.

Until he looks up and doesn’t see what he expected to see — it’s even worse than what he expected to see. Disappointment, sure — completely unwarranted, but she’d think it was. A ‘lost my puppy’ disappointment, an ‘ice cream cone melted and dropped to the pavement on a hot summer day juuust as I was about to give it a good licking’ disappointment he expected, but it was worse than that. A sorrow. The real kind, not the pretty princess kind. The kind that comes from betrayal.

“I’m sorry,” she says. Just I’m sorry, and slumps against the door, and it gives a hollow sorry little clunk against the doorstop. Her hair done up, falling onto her cheek as she looks down at the carpeting, trying not to look at him, maybe not wanting to look at him. Purse still clutched in the bend of her arm. Wonder where she’d gone, wonder what she’d come back for.

He picks up his tie from his desk behind him, slings it on over his neck, doesn’t bother tying it; uses the ends like the chains of a swing, something to hold onto while he’s flying, seeing the ground rushing in, afraid to jump off.

“Nothing to be sorry about.”

She was going to leave it at that, almost turned to go, but he sees she’s thought better of it. Can’t help it. Wants to push it, have her say. It’s what he likes about her. It keeps him going.

“I thought we were friends.”

“We are, so? You don’t tell me the nitty gritty dirty details of all your dates. Although you could, if you wanted to. I wouldn’t mind.”

She looks up at him, mouth open, incredulous. “That was a date?”

“Sure; dinner and a movie. He got the dinner, you got the movie.” Nothing, nada, not even an eyeroll. Tough room. “He has a thing for offices.”

She smirks. He likes that. He taught her that. Her hand slides off the doorknob and she walks to the couch, collapses in it, tired, unladylike. He likes that, too.

But fine, let her sulk. While she’s sulking, he’ll pour himself a double. Maybe a triple. Good scotch, business expense; have to entertain the clients. He wonders when she’ll realize how much she’s paying for this particular expensive expense, and how quickly it disappears. Or that the only two clients most of it ever sees are the back of his throat and pit of his stomach.

He looks at her through the bottom of his glass. Shiny, pink. A gorgeous dame, a flawed femme fatale, volatile and brittle. Or maybe that’s him. Sometimes he can’t tell the difference. He lowers the glass and looks at her without the distortion between them. In the frizzy lighting in his office, shadows smudged under her eyes, along her plastic nose, she looks almost ugly. He feels a sudden clench of tenderness for her. No, better than that. Of kinship.

“Look, Maddie-“

“So it was all a lie? All the cheap women and the trips to Vegas and all your filthy… exploits. That was a lie?”

Incredulous again. Oh, there’s that primadonna pout, that no-pony, no-tiara sourpuss.

“No,” he says. “Most of that was true. And some of them were even with the correct sex and/or gender.” He raises his hand. “Scouts honor, all my exploits are still unspeakably filthy.” He’s half-grinning at her, he can’t help it. He hates himself just a little for liking it, but it’s fun to see her like this. Upset. Unsure. Desuaved.

“Because I have to say, you never struck me as the type.”

He passes on the opportunity for the s&m joke. “I’m an equal opportunity hound dog, what can I say.” His glass is empty, and that definitely needs to be remedied.

“So you and he aren’t…”

”He? Him? No. We were only recently introduced.”

“Don’t you ever worry about-“

“Nope.” What, him worry? Never. Where the fuck did he put that bottle of scotch?

“Don’t you ever want-“

“Nope.”

“You don’t even know-“

“Yeah, I know what you’re trying to say, and I know what you’re trying to say isn’t what you want to say, and what I’m saying is that it isn’t worth saying.”

“I guess I don’t know what to say.”

“Say… I’d like a drink, how about you?”

“You just had one.”

“Did I?” He widens his eyes like silent movie starlet. “Well, that calls for a drink.”

She frowns, the corners of her mouth turning delicately downward. “I guess I’m saying,” she says, slowly, searching for the truth. “I worry about you. That’s all.” She’s looking him in the eye, like she’s a real person, and he loves that and he hates it, because it means he has to be a real person, too.

“Because I:?” the rest of his meaning supplied, tongue in cheek, hand in fist, a sliding motion. She’s shocked, she’s scandalized, she’s turned on! He looks in his desk for another glass.

She scoffs. “No.” And adds with perfect ingenuousness, “I was in the entertainment industry, you know.”

Found one, a little dusty, but it’ll do. He pours out two drinks, lifts both of them in one hand, glasses clink together; the bottle in the other. Sits down next to her.

“I just worry about you. It doesn’t have anything to do with…” She takes a deep breath and lets it out. “With whom you’re sleeping.”

“Ah, she finally blushes!” Or he can finally see it, this close to her. He hates her perfume, sweet and sour and too much; imagines what she smells like coming out of the shower. Imagines what she feels like coming. Not for the first time. “Here.” He hands her a glass and she takes it, but doesn’t drink, instead rolls it between her marble hands, watching the liquor coat the inside, her rings clicking the sides.

“There’s just so much I don’t know about you, that I want to know. I think we’re friends, and then I learn something about you that seems so alien, so unexpected, and I feel like I don’t even know you at all.”

He leans back into the couch, arm stretched out behind her. Smile on his face, to cover his confusion. What’s to know? This is who he is, as far as the world is concerned. The truth is much less interesting.

“Okay,” he says, slowly. Quietly. “Alright. How about we play a game? Truth or dare? Have you ever? I ask you if you’ve ever done something, and if you’ve done it then you have to take a drink. Have you ever—“

“No games, David. I don’t want to play games with you. I just want to be your friend.”

“You are my friend.”

“I mean a real friend. Someone you go to with your thoughts, your feelings, your hopes for the future!” Her eyes are almost made of moonlight, they’re so goddamned shiny. How does a woman get to be her age without losing that naïveté?

“Typical.”

“Typical. What’s typical, what do you mean, ‘typical’?” He can tell she’s trying real hard not to be shrill.

“Typical. Typical woman, thinks a man don’t tell her his feelings because he’s keeping them a secret from her. Listen, kid. Maybe the real secret is, he doesn't have any feelings left to feel.”

“That’s not true. You can’t believe that’s true.”

He shrugs, hides behind his scotch. “I don’t know.”

Eventually the silence between them ceases to crackle and becomes smoldering, glowing, companionable. He’s at that pleasant stage between the Bugs Bunny impressions and the falling on the floor with his underwear around his ankles in an anonymous toilet in a mystery bar. Down the Rabbit Hole. He can’t feel his teeth.

She speaks: “So what do guys have that women don’t?”

He’s closed his eyes at some point. Either that or the entire LA power grid’s gone out. “You tell me.”

“Point taken.” He can hear the little smirk again. God, he’d love to kiss that right off her face.

He opens his eyes so he can get a good look at her, and immediately wishes he hadn’t. He can almost see a nipple through her shimmery blouse. She’s spinning, ever so slightly. “Another round?” he murmurs.

“No, I shouldn’t. I have to drive home.”

“I meant with me. I’m good to go. I could go all night. You can’t tell me you didn’t like what you saw.”

She growls in playful frustration, hits him with her itty bitty purse. He pretends to have been hurt. They’re both smiling, though, and this time for real.

“I’ll see you tomorrow morning.” She stands, smooths her skirt. “Bright and early.”

“Aw, ma!” He tracks the blur of her across the room to the doorway, florescent rectangle of light with the shadow of a woman inside.

“And, David…” She spins on her heel. She spins, she spins. Her hair all lit up. He wonders if the carpet matches the drapes. “Don’t use the office for your personal dalliances again. If you treat my business like a brothel, I’ll have to charge you the going rate. It’d be cheaper to get a hotel. Desk fetish or no.”

“Yes, boss.” He raises his empty glass and salutes her swaying, retreating derriere. What a dame. Frigid as anything, but we all have our coping mechanisms.

She exits, upstage. The main entrance door is closed and locked behind her.

He pours himself another drink.


End file.
